As we read of this contrast between Esau and Jacob, and their destinies,
we feel--and we feel it all the more because Jacob to begin with seems to
be made of such common clay--we feel what a transforming power in a man's
life this awaking of the soul may be.

A life which is without the inspiration that takes possession of us in
the moments of this awakening, and is consequently without these visions
that flash before the soul as it awakens, a life that is not deeply
stirred by spiritual hopes or Divine thought, or the call to new duty,
remains in one man a selfish and worldly life, in another a frivolous, in
a third a sensual life. But the very same life--and here is the
practical value to us, here is the hopefulness of such considerations--the
very same life, when the breath of God's spirit or His penetrating voice
has stirred and roused the soul in it, is felt to be transformed. The
man is born anew.

"There is nothing finer," some one has said, "than to see a soul rise up
in men, which amazes the very men in whom it rises." They are surprised
to find that these new capacities were in them, unnoticed through their
careless days, yet in them all the time. This birth of the new life,
with all its promise of new tastes, new ambitions, new thoughts, new
purposes, may indeed come to you without your feeling all at once how
great a thing it is. At first it may be nothing more than some vision of
the possibilities of your life, or some electric flash of new
consciousness that runs through you, or the sharp pang of remorse for
some sin or some neglect, or the flush of shame or repulsion as you think
of something or other in your life, or the glow of some good resolution
to begin some new life or new duty, or take some new turn, or pursue some
new aim. You hardly think perhaps of this as the awakening of your soul.